Miserable At Best
by inhysterics
Summary: Songfic to Mayday Parade.


Published as Through Your Window on my fp account.

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Miserable At Best  
(Mayday Parade)

I can't help but feel miserable. I stare blankly at the phone in my hand, small and black and unimpressive, but at the same time, it's the one thing I couldn't bear to lose now. Though it's not so much the phone, really, but the _voice _in the phone; the last piece of the last memory I have. Of you. I press the black rectangle to my cheek, holding it possessively.

It's the first time in seven days- an excruciating one-sixty-eight hours, since I've spoken to you. Spoken? Well, that remains to be seen. My lungs refuse for let go of the breath they hold tight and burning in my chest. My lips refuse to part, my tongue refuses to move.

The sound of sobbing comes through the receiver.  
"Don't cry," I manage to whisper. "I know it's hard." And god, do I know it is.

"Hard." You mumble, the pain evident in your painfully familiar voice, "And I'm trying my hardest."

I'm sure you are. I'm trying my hardest not to break too, but not from the cracking sounds and tears I can hear in your voice. It's not that- it's the fact that that's _all. _  
All the nights we spent together, sure, you're sad. But you're _alive. _

I roll down the window of my car, where I'm sitting, talking and watching. Watching you through your window. Watching _him. _  
I can see you really are crying. You're poring over the landline in your hand, same as I am. You're twirling the curly cord around your fingers, dripping with the tears you wiped off your cheeks.  
But I can see more than that. I know you're upset. But your eyes wander across the room.

"Let's not pretend you're alone tonight, darling," I murmur, watching intently as your eyes flicker towards the ground for a moment. Ashamed?

"I- I-" Yes you are.

"I know he's there," I confirm.  
Your eyes frantically search the room for some kind of way out of this. I'm not sure what you're expecting to find, but I want an escape too. I want an escape from the way everything looks so dull compared to the picture of your shining eyes that floats in my head, clouding my vision. A hiding place, away from the way no music sounds even decent without your singing, humming – even just whistling along.

Thinking about your eyes, your voice, it brings back memories of the time we lay in the grassy hills, cliché as ever but feeling so unique despite it all.  
We stared at the sky, its vastness; it's brilliant, unclouded blue majesty. I wished such a thing as the sky could be mine- but then I saw you lying beside me and I didn't need anything more than I had.  
Because you were more than everything that brightened my life; more than the sun or the stars. You were everything I could ever have dreamed of, and I found myself needing you more than I needed even to breathe- the ground under my feet fell away when you weren't beside me, and my own bed felt cold and foreign when I was alone.

It made me wonder, constantly and regrettably, if I deserved you.  
My life seemed so small and empty and with so little to give to you in return for everything you could give to me. I believed, at this point, that I might be good for something. I just hadn't found it yet. Ever-hopeful, I was; you did that to me.

"So how have you been?" Your voice is staying together slightly better now. I can see you holding the gaze of someone on the other side of the room. I can only see you through the window, though. Just you is enough, anyway. You would have been enough...

"I get the point that I should leave you alone," I said, not exactly answering your question. You were just making friendly conversation, anyway. A distraction from the obvious misery that wasn't quite far enough away from the topic.

"I'm sorry-" Don't start with that, darling.

"I'm fine." I reply, trying not to make my voice sound quite so cold. It must have worked, because you relaxed immediately. You smiled. Not because of me, though. Because of him, on the other side of the room. I bet he gets the nerve to walk over to you soon enough. I bet he'll ask you to dance with him. Ask my girl to dance.

But then, are you mine anymore? And for cause to doubt myself, were you ever really mine?  
The memories remain cuttingly sharp, clear and defined in such a way that I at least believe I have something to miss deeply. Whether or not you genuinely feel the same...  
Well, there could have been nothing between us, but both of us feeling like we had something to miss. This stuff doesn't necessarily make any sense.

My eyelids are fighting a war. A war between the utter exhaustion I'm feeling and the burning need to keep looking through that square pane of glass, looking at you. You could guess which side was winning, if you knew what I was suffering for you. You'd only be disappointed, but it's not as though you aren't anyway; we both know I'm not strong enough to get through this. There's no backup plan for me.

"That's great," your voice seems to have miraculously cleared of its tears and snot, and you're perfect little You again. Perfect Katie. "A new girl I should meet?"

You jump to conclusions too fast. But I know you don't believe what you're asking. It's only polite, since you've found your own update-date. I'm the _old model, _you know.

I shake my head heavily while I speak into the phone. "No, Katie, you know there isn't," I try not to make my voice as audibly thick with regret as it really is.

"Never mind," you say, trying to sound carelessly dismissive, but slipping, a hint of the awkwardness snagging and splitting the words in your throat. I wait for you to change the subject.

I wait for a pretty long while before I realise that you aren't going to. My eyes focus again and I realise I've not bee watching properly; watching as you gently put the phone down on a table, or a set of drawers or something, leaving me without even hanging up.

As things are, you're standing a little further towards the centre of the room, still just in view of the window I'm looking through. But you won't be for long.  
I see a hand, slender and white -beautiful but definitely a man's hand – reaching out to you. I can imagine the word's he's speaking; asking you to dance.

Didn't I know this would happen? But just expecting the future _isn't enough._

Your hand meets his hand meets your waist meets his body and, pressed against him, I watch each step you take- waltzing in and out of my sight as though dodging in and out of my life, teasing me.

The lace curtains, they're pretty but I wish they would evaporate, disappear. I'd push anything away pretty just to catch another last glimpse of you. What am I holding on to?  
My attention slips to the phone, still tightly pressed in my hand, still relaying the buzzing of the quiet room. Telling me nothing, ignoring me, but I won't let it go. Why not, stupid? Why can't I just shut up and turn away? Blink and move on.

Who knows how long this could go on for, really? Me just staring at you and you just staring at him. And him staring back at you; I'm the only one who's left out.

So, like I'm watching a movie and just can't draw my eyes away from the screen, I consciously lower my hand, holding the phone, away from my ear. I try to place it on the dashboard, but my fingers let it slip before my hand makes it quite that far.  
I want so badly for you to notice me, right now, or even better, to duck out of his arms and run back to me. Maybe for just one last night. But I know that wouldn't help, and it wouldn't happen, either.

So this is the last scene. The last scene, of this stupid, agonizing movie I'm watching through your window. I keep a little under-my-breath commentary going, whispering to myself as though not to disturb the others in the cinema. I find this funny, since I'm more alone right now than anyone.  
_I can live without her. _I tell myself.  
_I can live without you. _I want to say, into the phone. But you left the phone nearly as dead as you left me.

Still not tearing my eyes from you and him, him and you and _not _me, I start the car. It roars loudly, and you hear it. You look out the window. And I'd swear you see me. I'd swear.  
But you turn back to him, and he takes your face in his hands. And you reach up, just like you would in a film, kiss him. Him, and not me.  
And that justabout sums it up. The happy ending of the movie, for everyone else. And I'm all alone, and who knows where I'm heading - but I'm gone; you won't have to see me again, and I won't have to see you. This works for both of us, see? Memories, well, they'll fade. Scars too. Everything we remember, we can forget.  
You can replace me with him. I can replace you with a hole so big it feels _almost_ nice and dark and deep enough to bury myself in.

You can live without me - I know you can.  
And I can live without you, too. But without you, I'll be miserable at best. And maybe, just maybe, one day, I'll forgive myself for this.


End file.
